When the City of Saskatoon began posting colour-coded hygiene grades in restaurant windows this week and listing every eatery in a public online ranking, diners, cooks, councillors, and owners quickly split into opposing camps over whether the grades belong in the window at all. The louder complaints came from the kitchens rather than the customers: most diners who were asked welcomed the grades, whose scores feed a public list that orders every restaurant in the city from cleanest to worst. Delia Marchetti, whose family eats out most weekends, is firmly in favour and studies the list closely. "I pay for these inspections through my taxes, so naturally I should be able to look them up.
My children deserve the safest kitchen in town, and our usual spot is slipping down the list, so I have my eye on the place across the street instead." Warren Okonkwo, the city's chief environmental health officer, admits he is not entirely at ease ordering his inspectors to slap a grade in every window, though he accepts that diners are owed clear figures on how a kitchen performs, so long as no one twists those figures to set a tiny family kitchen against a large chain. "What the grading really gives us is hard numbers, and numbers are how we hold an operator answerable to the public. Take away the record of what an inspector found, and we have no honest way of knowing whether a kitchen is meeting the standards the law demands."
